Welcoming the newest member of the RS Team!

On May 26, we welcomed Alexandra Susanne Graham into the world. She is tiny at 5lbs 15 ozs and is doing very well. We expect her to be roaming the office corridors in no time :)

Here are some photo highlights of Alex's first day.

$75,000 raised for Special Olympics!

On May 23, the RIGHTSLEEVE Raiders participated in a day long fundraiser called Marathon of Sport. All funds raised at the event were donated to Canadian Special Olympics. Throughout the day, we competed alongside Special Olympians in Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Football, Soccer, Basketball, Volleyball and Floor Hockey.

Over the course of the day, all 18 teams collectively raised $75,000 for Special Olympics. We came in 4th place with a total of $6,132 raised.

Marathon of Sport is organized by motionball. motionball's mandate is to introduce the next generation of donors, volunteers and sponsors to the Special Olympics movement through integrated social and sporting events. Since inception in 2002, motionball has raised over $1,000,000 for Canadian Special Olympics.

Software is a curated collection of ideas, benefits and features

I credit Jason Fried, of 37 Signals fame, for this clever statement on software development.

I really enjoyed Jason's presentation at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo as he hit upon several of the issues we face at RIGHTSLEEVE as we roll out various web software features internally and externally.

 

One of the biggest challenges we face is feature creep and the desire to include every little request we get from our clients to improve a component of the merchandise store technology we provide.

This also impacts our internal development as it relates to our CRM/VRM engine that powers our business. After years of design, it's often the simple features that stick, while the complex features die a quiet death. For example, we developed a Facebook style news feed to highlight the important selling and production activities in our company - I am not sure where we would be without it. Ironically, this feature was an afterthought.

We have a graveyard of nifty features that made sense in theory, but never worked in reality.

Having said this, software development is a process of trial and error .... and signal vs noise. Without the noise (ie. the attempts, brainstorm sessions, blue sky ideas) there would be no signals (ie. the simple "Aha" features that just work). It's improving the ratio between the hits and misses that's key.

As Fried says, it's our job to be the curator by collecting the best ideas while sifting out the rest.

Passion (continued)

I was captivated (and haunted) by this 1994 Time Magazine article on the Life and Death of Kevin Carter, a relatively unknown photojournalist who covered the Apartheid conflict in South Africa at its most bloody and horrific. Carter, above all, was a man driven by a passion for his craft.


I am a big believer in passion, having written about it before on this blog.


I am drawn to the way it brings out the very best in people. Unfortunately for Kevin Carter, his passion to do the right thing (expose the evils of Apartheid through gripping photography) was overwhelmed by his unstable mental state as he claimed his own life in the summer of 1994, arguably at the height of influence.


I find it hard to draw any real comparisons between the work we do at RIGHTSLEEVE and the demanding work of a war photographer. However, what it did reinforce for me is that with passion, one can do anything. In Carter's case, this meant winning the Pulitzer Prize for Photography and, in doing so, shining a spotlight on the famine in Sudan with this photograph.


Passion brought out the best in Kevin Carter. His accomplishments still endure several years after his untimely death.

Swag 2.0 product launch

Swag 2.0 was a great success yesterday. We had close to 200 people attend the product launch - thank you very much to those that were able to make the event (and for those who were not able to make it, you were missed and we look forward to seeing you in 2010)!

We have some great pictures of the event that are now hot off the press.

A number of people were also asking for a link to the product specials we had on display at Swag 2.0. Here they are

Thank you for your continued support.

The RIGHTSLEEVE team